Friday fun: smartest goldfish EVER, loud shrimp and ocean rythyms

We have a few fun posts to get your weekend started right. Leading off is one of the best advertisements we’ve seen in a long time. Meet “Mr. Memory” the worlds smartest goldfish in the ads for Drench bottled water in the UK. Great job by CHI & Partners of London putting together this spot that combined real footage of a live goldfish, CG effects and a fake fish to bring Mr. Memory to life. Ooops! Sorry if we broke your hearts boys and girls — Mr. Memory is not real and neither is Santa Claus. More goodness after the break.

Who would have thought the tiny pistol shrimp is the loudest creature in the ocean? Although the male blue whale song reaches an astonishing 188 decibels (a jet engine reaches 140), the pistol shrimp can hit 200 decibels. By snapping its large claw together, the shrimp uses the sound burst to stun its prey. Keep in mind a rise of ten decibels is roughly doubling the volume on the decibel scale.

As hobbyists we have known that lunar and tidal cycles are just as important as the solar cycle — heck it even launched trying to market additional benefits of moonlights for coral and fish spawning. Recent research by molecular biologists at the University of Vienna in BioEssays, describe the ubiquity of lunar and tidal cycles in ocean creatures. The research was sparked by the discovery of a light-sensitive gene in the Platyneereis dumerilii, a living fossil of a marine worm. The molecular research is showing the lunar cycle has effects on everything from jellyfish to mollusks and yes, even coral.